Oh, The Places I've Been!

“Things may happen and often do to people as brainy and footsy as you”― Dr. Seuss, Oh, the Places You'll Go!

How many of us received Dr. Seuss's Oh, The Places You'll Go! as a graduation gift? I got mine after high school, I think. For graduation from residency, My Awesome Parents (MAP) gifted me a piece of personalized artwork with each state in which I got my education: Maryland (K-12), Missouri (BA), Illinois (MD PhD), and Pennsylvania (residency). Each state is made of words about the state written in a different primary color. So Maryland has crabs, Missouri has the Ozarks, Illinois has deep dish pizza, and Pennsylvania has the Liberty Bell. When I opened, I knew exactly what I wanted to do to personalize it further. I hopped on RedBubble and found transparent stickers with objects associated with each state. I actually ordered more than would fit so that I would have options; the leftovers will probably end up on travel mugs (then maybe I won't lose them as easily!). Below you can see the work in progress. For Maryland, a black-eyed Susan with the Maryland flag at the center and a crab with the state glad didn't make the cut; I chose the Old Bay spice box from McCormick's and a fancy, mosaic blue crab. I thought about fried ravioli or the Washington University in St. Louis seal but settled on the facade of Brookings Building (looks like a castle) and the silhouettes of two lindyhoppers. For Illinois, I left off the Block I for the University of Illinois in favor of the Alma Mater statue; and I put a painting of Louis Armstrong up in Lake Michigan for Chicago and the blues. And for Pennsylvania, I put a golden Cathedral of Learning for the University of Pittsburgh at the center and made the difficult decision to leave off the Mr. Rogers trolley in favor of the Duquesne incline, for reasons of space. Oh! And I ordered a "Made in Texas" QPC code, for obvious reasons. I was momentarily stymied when I discovered it was *exactly* the same size as the frame I picked up at Michael's, but a few trims with scissors cut it down to fit nicely. I'll hang the finished product either in our bedroom or, when I get one, my office.

You Can't Go Home Again

It's true what they say: you can't go home again. I recently flew back to where I did graduate and medical school after two years away, in order to visit old friends--at least, the ones who were still there. As it so happened, one of my dissertation advisors and our church's long-time choir director were retiring that weekend, so I was able to celebrate with them in person. It was bitter sweet to drive those gridded streets again. They were so familiar: I can remember listening to the radio while driving down that one on Saturday errands; this is the route I used to bike to the farmer's market; I always liked the Christmas lights on that house over there. Of course some things had changed: new apartment buildings that are depressing the rental market, for instance, and new restaurants, a few old buildings torn down. What hurt the most was that I spent a dozen formative years there, and it cannot be "home" again, because I needed to complete my training elsewhere. We knew that when we came, and yes, those years were sometimes difficult: more studying than socializing, far from family, regrets about opportunities missed, cancer. But the place was comfortable and nurturing, as evidenced by the number of meet-ups I tried to cram into a few short days.

I ate lunch with a friend at the new Broadway Food Hall; took a walk on the park path near our old house; patronized the Steak N Shake because the Krekel's hasn't opened yet; worked at the public library; ate outside downtown with friends; got breakfast at the farmer's market with Bible Study folks; tried a new Indian restaurant with an old union colleague; hung around with a church lady and her fur-children; caught up with old swing-dance partners; attended two retirement parties; ran into dear acquaintances on the street; worshipped twice on Sunday morning; and met up with former professors and still mentors. When Dear Husband and I moved away in 2016, I definitely felt as if I had grown tired of the physical landscape but was only just starting to get to know the human landscape. With any luck we will have knitted bonds that will stretch across the country with us as we move from one home to another.

Flower-like butterflies fill the air in the entranceway of the public library.

What is the Opposite of Nostalgia?

As graduation and moving approach, I am trying to divest myself of old paper journals, unloved knickknacks, and the detritus of sixteen years of college, graduate, and medical school. Next to my desk I found a thick stack of lined index cards, a handwritten bibliography of figures from German medical history that I compiled from microfiche (microfiche!) about a decade ago, before my first laptop, before the Deutsche Biografie went online, and before the Sächsische Biografie was compiled. Reliant as I am on my computer's search function, I have no nostalgia for the way I would have written my dissertation in the pre-internet age.

Images of Research, Take 2

Update: My entry was one of twenty-five semi-finalists in the 2016 Image of Research competition!

Editor's Note: While I was working at the archives and libraries in Germany, I entered a photography contest for images of research. That image didn't win. I have decided to try again.

Inside My Insides

The questions that drive my research are, How is medical and scientific knowledge created? How does it circulate? In my dissertation, I looked specifically at ideas about food and bodies in late-nineteenth and early twentieth-century Saxon Germany. I believe that knowledge about bodies extends along a spectrum from recognized experts like physicians to laypeople and patients, who know their own bodies best. This is an image of the “anatomical flap doll” in Friedrich Eduard Bilz’s extremely popular manual, The New Naturopathy: Text- and Reference Book of Natural Healing and Hygiene (1925). Far from anatomical or physiological knowledge being the sole property of doctors and scientists, it actually circulated widely in traveling hygiene shows and books such as this one. Germans assimilated facts about calories and the digestive system, opinions about what a healthy meal looks like, and statistics about agriculture and public health into a mental model of the German nation comprised of German citizens that I call “the telescopic body.” This body concept stretched from the molecular through the communal to the (inter)national and informed medical practice, social movements, and political decisions. Rather than merely having an inside and an outside, the telescopic body’s insides had insides.

I took this photograph in the library of the GermanHygiene Museum in Dresden.

What Do Library Science, History, & Civil Engineering Have in Common? On Location Part 1 of 2

Editor's Note: Over the years long-time readers will have noticed that I frequently refer to the campus faith group with which Dear Husband and I celebrate holidays (some religious, some not), play games, and do arts and crafts. We are an eclectic group of "graduate students and like-minded persons" who meet weekly during the academic year to discuss books or videos. During the summer we sometimes offer alternative programming. This year, we are visiting our respective buildings around campus to learn about each other's research. Here is a sampling of the visits thus far.

The first week, a recent graduate of the library school took the group to the Rare Book Room to marvel at unique texts--such as a 1976 draft of the Star Wars script in which Luke Skywalker is still named "Luke Starkiller"--and very old ones, such as a book from the Cavagna Collection, Per la facciata del Duomo di Milano (ca. 1657) (below). This collection of opinions about architectural renovations to Milan's cathedral has what amounts to the papermaker's version of a footprint in fresh concrete: a handprint made while the paper was still wet. You can see more images, learn about making paper in the early modern period, and read about the Milanese cathedral blueprints in this blog post.

I led the next tour, representing history. We traipsed through four of the five stories of the big old building that houses my department. In one of my old classrooms, we stopped to do an exercise I learned in a German course and have used to good effect in history classes: we put up pictures on the walls and "visited a gallery." This gallery had portraits of Jesus: Jesus looking holy in Warner Sallman's ubiquitous "Head of Christ," Jesus teaching in a Rembrandt, and Jesus doing both at the same time in the Christ Pantocrator (Christ the Savior) icon from the 6th century... Check out the  picture above. The right side of his face is calm, and he lifts his hand in a gesture of blessing and teaching. The left side of his face is stern, and he carries a heavy Bible for instruction. This particular image is the oldest version of a common Orthodox icon and can be found in Saint Catherine's Monastery near Mount Sinai in Egypt. Then we went out for ice cream.

Finally, the group went to the civil engineering building, where we started by ogling the cranes, earthquake simulation center, and concrete canoes. (Yes, you read that correctly.) Our guide showed us the special material he studies with a super-high-tech microscope that can zoom in reeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaallllly close to the surface of a specimen. He uses a diamond to stress the material, measures various parameters, and develops models for understanding these things. Then we went out for Indian food.

It turns out that what Library Science, History, and Civil Engineering have in common are graduate students excited about their research and eager to share it to build a community of faith. Check back later for more summer tours!

Nutrition Myths: Past & Present

I had the great honor and pleasure of delivering the June Internal Medicine Grand Rounds lecture. It has two parts. First, I introduce the history of medicine as a discipline and make an argument for why I did not waste eight years of my life pursuing a PhD in history. Then, I use short vignettes from the development of modern nutrition in Germany around World War I to explain three contemporary myths drawn from the longer list set forth in the “Nutrition Myths and Healthy DietaryAdvice in Clinical Practice.” One theme is the observation that one generation’s scientific fact is often the next generation’s scientific myth. For those of you who missed it, here is a slightly expanded version.







(Turn up your speakers to hear me better.)

What Medical School Looks Like XII

Sometimes medical school looks like second-year medical students wearing plastic leis and blowing bubbles. Red clown noses and Chinese finger traps might also have been involved.

We were learning about healthy ways to handle stress and appropriate ways to use humor in medicine.

These students had just had their psychiatry final exam the day before, and they were understandably nervous about both their grades and catching up with studying everything else. In addition, most are counting down the weeks until their first board exam (Step 1) and feel overwhelmed.

I shared what I had learned about avoiding burnout as a third-year medical student: I only work six days a week, five if I can. As a graduate student without a lab or office on campus--and being too cheap to pay for food to work in a cafe--I wrote my dissertation at home. I felt as if I were "always" working. But I easily gave into distractions, so really I was always "working."

Now that I am doing clinical rotations, I work five to six days per week in the office or hospital. There is some but not much down time, so I feel more productive during the day. I try to study at least two hours in the evening. On weekends, I do household chores and work on side projects, like presentations. I told the second-years, "I cannot be a medical student seven days a week. I don't want to be a medical student 24/7. For my sanity, I need to be not-a-student on the weekends so that I look forward to resuming clinical duties on Monday morning." In other words, I have discovered the necessity of a Sabbath, thereby saving me from burnout. And I still pass all my tests.

However, with the next set of board exams just months away (Step 2), let's see how much of my own advice I take!

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Birthday Season

It's birthday season in the Double-Doctor house! Today Dear Husband's brother called to wish him a belated birthday and me a happy birthday. DH says he'll call back tomorrow, just in time to wish his brother "Feliz cumpleanos" himself. Meanwhile, my younger brother's natal day is at the end of the month. Gotta love July.

To celebrate, we carpooled with some friends to an "authentic" German restaurant, complete with stuffed hunting trophies on the walls and waitresses in dirndls. We enjoyed goulasch, sausages, schnitzels, asparagus, Spätzle, and potatoes every which way. And of course some Wein und Bier. A big favorite at the table was the Mettwurst, a paprika-spiced spreadable sausage. On top of all that, there was live accordion music, and when another couple needed a lesson on how to polka, DH and I got up and showed them how it's done!



Below is our birthday loot. So many sweet or funny cards. In the background are the cloth napkins my mother gifted us, "so [we] can be green together." She also got me the tshirt from Girl Scouts' "Ban Bossy" campaign. Whatever critiques I might make about Sheryl Sandberg's individual solutions to structural problems facing women, the campaign hits home for me, because I was labelled "bossy" while growing up. Some of that is attributable to being a know-it-all older sister, but some was surely also due to gendered perceptions of leadership. I am glad that Girl Scouts was there to help me grow into a confident and more thoughtful woman.

I asked DH to buy me the book, Beyond Bratwurst: A History of Food in Germany. When he teased me about having yet another book to read for my dissertation, I retorted that it's for my book. "Oh, well that's good," he replied, "because it's too late to read anything else for your dissertation!" Today I learned that "I" had bought him new organ shoes. Happy birthday to us!

“Stop reading and start writing!”

“Stop reading and start writing!” said my senior dissertation adviser on, I think, two occasions. So I did. He was trying to snap me out of the graduate-student dilemma of being a few years (or sometimes decades) behind in knowledge of the literature in one’s academic field. Why won’t other scholars stop publishing, at least until we catch up? One of the hardest lessons of graduate school is that you cannot read everything—even everything that you “should” read. When it comes to writing the dissertation, it is better to stop procrastinating by reading “just one more” book or article that contains someone else’s position on the subject and articulate your own position. The only time I relapsed into reading secondary sources was when I needed to know something factual (e.g. how working-class European families organized meals) or when I wanted to remind myself about a particular historian’s position, so that I could argue against it (e.g. that communal kitchens were unpopular and unsuccessful). Three years later, I had completed, defended, and deposited more than 300 pages of prose on the merging of science and politics in the rationing systems of World War I-era Germany. And I had stopped reading.

The weekend before graduation, I attended the annual conference of my professional organization, the American Association of the History of Medicine. During one of the keynote talks, which involved “shout-outs” to numerous well-known historians of medicine, I realized that I had managed to get through a decade of graduate education without having read some key texts in medical history. Granted, many of these cover American topics and so are not directly relevant to my own work, but being a medical humanist in the US, it is easier to talk to one’s clinical colleagues about our shared national medical history. So I promised myself that I would read one book in the history of medicine every month until I graduate from medical school. So far that has meant a few pages here and there at night before falling asleep, and many pages in airports and on planes while traveling one weekend. Although, now that Dear Husband and I have started preparing for the 32-week-long Disciple I Bible study together at bedtime, I may have to block off another time when I am not in clinic or studying for exams to recover this crucial bit of my identity and intellectual life.

In June I read Medical Muses: Hysteria in Nineteenth-Century Paris, by Asti Hustvedt. Written for the general reading public, Medical Muses describes in detail the lives and medical cases of three women made famous at Jean-Martin Charcot’s psychiatric hospital in Paris: Blanche, Augustine, and Geneviève. In the 1870s and 1880s, Charcot developed a theory of hysteria involving epileptic “fits,” catatonic poses, hypnotism, promiscuity, confabulation, and insensitivity to pain. Hustvedt attempts to recover these women’s lives before and after their incarcerations at the Salpêtrière and to show how they still had some autonomy over their symptoms and representations, despite the fact that Charcot literally displayed his favorite patients like circus animals, opening the lecture hall on Tuesday afternoons for demonstrations of their symptoms. Hysteria was a leading medical theory until Charcot’s death in 1892, when it was quickly swept under the rug of medical misadventures. He is still remembered for Charcot-Marie-Tooth Disease and other neurological and medical phenomena. For someone who is not trained as a medical historian, Husvedt does an admirable job explaining the social and medical contexts as well as the various images of the three beautiful, afflicted women.

Up next: Susan Reverby’sExamining Tuskegee.

Frau Doktor's PhD Portrait

Photo Card

View the entire collection of cards.

Fer Shizzle!

In the last post about my dissertation, I used a Wordle to represent the terms that appear most often in the text. After a conversation online, I then got the idea to create magnets with two different images at Zazzle. They arrived just two days later and are currently decorating our stove.

If for some reason you would like a little dissertation swag, just let me know. More can be ordered; they're $5 each.


Editor's Note: Dear Husband told me I had spelled "fo' shizzle" incorrectly, so I looked it up. Urban Dictionary and Slang Words Dictionary tell me that "fer shizzle" is the preppy, suburban corruption of the stylized urban phrase...my bad!

Introducing: Dissertation 3.0!

Copyright + Title Page + Abstract + Table of Contents + Preface + Introduction + 5 Chapters + 2 Introductory Essays + Conclusion + Appendix + Bibliography = 1 Dissertation

Pages: ix + 363 (323 pages of text in the main body)

Words: 141,528

Footnotes: 1,022

Illustrations: 26

Tables: 9

Recipes: 15

164 Primary Sources + 399 Secondary Sources + 29 Periodicals + 6 Online Resources = 598 Total Sources

7 Archives + 9 Libraries in 7 Cities

And it can all be reduced to a potato-shaped Wordle that shows I use the word "like" more often than "Dresden," less often than "food," and about as often as the word "body." Fabulous. German history written by the Valley girl I never was! (Click to enlarge.)

Editor's Note: You may also be interested in Dissertation 3.0, Dissertation 2.0 or Dissertation 1.0.

From Soup to Nuts

Early in my dissertation I discuss the ubiquity of feeding beef broth to patients, and I close with some remarks on nutrition and food policy under the National Socialists. In an irreverent universe, I would entitle the book manuscript

"From Soup to Nuts: Nutrition and the Telescopic Body in Germany, 1890-1935."

But that probably won't fly at an academic press, so I'll stick with the original title, "The Politics of the Table." For your amusement, here is the table of contents in the format of an elaborate, 11-course banquet menu:

Oysters on the Half Shell

Acknowledgements

Soup

Introduction: Bodies that Eat (and Drink)

Appetizer

Nutrition in the Laboratory, 1890-1930

Light Meat

Feeding the Sick: Nutrition and Authority in the Clinic and the Sick Room

Cold Entrée

Under the Hygiene Eye: Nutrition at the German Hygiene Museum

Hot Entrée

How to Cook Your Vegetables, or

Ragnar Berg’s Controversy with the German Canning Industry

Pudding

The Blockade and Rationing in Saxony

Roast

The Politics of the Family Table during World War I

Vegetable

Special Rations: How the War Came to Sick Rooms in Dresden

Dessert

“I am not a taste barbarian”: Taste and Bodily Sensations during World War I

Fruit and Cheese

Nutritional Knowledge and Power in the Third Reich

Frau Doktor, PhD

It is with great joy that I announce that I have successfully defended my dissertation! You can now call me Frau Doktor. Here are some pictures from the big event:

The proud committee. We've come a long way together since I entered graduate school a decade ago. These professors have been the most important in my history education. They have also become friends.

The tradition is to go out drinking after one's defense, but I've never been much of a drinker--and besides, I wouldn't set foot in a bar on St. Patrick's Day. We had frozen custard cake and sundaes from the favorite local shop. I had hoped to "hold court" on their picnic tables outside, but the weather was not cooperating, so we moved the party to the med school.

The guests were so sweet: they sang "For she's a jolly good doctor" to me!

The Dissertator

Now that this period in my life is almost over, I finally feel like I can joke about it...

We are pleased to introduce the third in our line of student action figures: The Dissertator! Our busy bee wears jeans and a t-shirt so she won't look out of place in the library, at a coffee shop, or at home on the couch. She comes with one stack of library books and one stack of manila folders containing photocopies from the archives. There is even a sheet of stickers so you can choose her laptop screen: MS Word? Facebook? YouTube? For only $15 extra, we'll include one of three distractions: a cat, a basket of laundry, or a pile of Netflix DVDs. Let us choose for you please.

You may also like our other student action figures: Biker Graduate Student, Conference Goer, or their companion, Card-Carrying Union Member. New this summer: Medical Student!

Dissertation 3.0

Countdown Clocks

You may also be interested in Dissertation 2.0 or Dissertation 1.0.

Dissertation 2.0

Now announcing Dissertation 2.0! Thanks to market pressure, this update to Dissertation 1.0 has been released two-and-a-half weeks early. The Politics of the Table: Nutrition and the Telescopic Body in Saxon Germany, 1890-1935 offers improvements to all of the features of the first model, an extended Introduction and Conclusion, and a full suite of Appendices and Illustrations. Due to timing and supply issues, we regret that we cannot offer Chapter 6 at this time.


COMING SOON! Dissertation 3.0!

Throwback Thursday

Taking my first of three written preliminary exams (September 2007)

It's throwback Thursday! This week I decided to get a jump on the paperwork required for me to walk with my PhD in May. I registered my name to graduate and filed the title page of my dissertation. The email accepting my title page noted that it has been more than five years since I passed my last preliminary exam (an oral prelim, a defense of my dissertation proposal, back in fall 2008). Therefore, I needed to take a second preliminary exam to prove my knowledge was current in order to defend my dissertation. ?!?

There must be some loophole, I replied, I'm a dual-degree student. Nope, it's a university-wide rule. I've been here 10 years; how had I never heard anything about this?? I sent emails to my advisers and posted an outraged message on facebook while I tried to figure out how to accomplish yet another task this spring.

The responses on facebook were quite interesting: colleagues who are "behind" me in their programs uniformly responded with outrage. What kind of requirement is that? Don't they know we have enough on our plates? Somebody should do something about that!

Meanwhile, colleagues who have already completed their degrees told me this was quite common and really only a formality. Usually the defense committee just asks you about the most important book(s) in your field in the last five years. It's an easy enough question to answer, since you've probably been citing it/them in your diss. Then the rest of the defense goes on as scheduled, only with twice the usual paperwork.

So that is what I will do. I've filled out the form to request a day, time, and room for my dissertation defense, which will likely take place the first week of April. What frustrates me is that if I had known of the rule earlier, or if anyone in my department had been paying attention, I could have filled out the second prelim paperwork in advance of my pre-defense, which happened this past fall and could easily have doubled as the required examination.

As it is, no harm no foul. Maybe my little outburst even served to educate a few of my friends about this hoop they may have to jump through. I've traded my "stressed kitty" t-shirt (above) for my "happy camper" t-shirt. T minus 7 or 8 weeks until I have to turn the final draft in to my committee!

The Write Stuff

What, don't you recline on the floor to work?

Or have you adopted those new-fangled contraptions they call "desk" and "chair"?

Fast da! / Almost there!

Am Eingang zum Campus steht die von berühmten Plastiker Lorado Taft entworfen bronze Figur, die "Alma Mater." Sie steht vor ihrem Stuhl, ihre Arme ausgestreckt, um die StudentInnen wilkommen zu heissen. Hinter ihr stehen "Studium" (eine Frau) und "Arbeit" (ein Mann), die einander ihre Hände geben.

Die alte Mutter steht im Zentrum von Campus Town, und die Studenten machen Photos vor und auf ihr wann sie graduieren. Leider ist ihr Podest seit anderthalb Jahre leer, während die Figuren repariert werden. Hoffentlich kehren sie vor Mai zurück, wenn ich meine Doktorehre bekommen!

Bis dann habe ich meine "kleine" Verteidigung mit dieser Pose auf einem Dampfraster(?) gefeiert. 20. Spetember habe ich "das grüne Licht" bekommen, meine Doktorarbeit fertigzustellen!

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

At the entrance to the campus stands the "Alma Mater," a bronze statue designed by famous sculptor Lorado Taft. She stands in front of her chair with her arms stretched out  to welcome the students. Behind her stand "Learning" (a woman) and "Labor" (a man), who are reaching their hands out to each other.

The old mother stands in the heart of Campus Town, and the students take pictures in front of and on her when they graduate. Unfortunately, her platform has been empty for a year and a half, while the figures are being repaired. Hopefully they will return before May, when I receive my doctorate!

Until then I celebrated my "little" defense with this pose on a steam grate (?). On Spetember 20th I got the "green light" to finish my dissertation!